The X189 was an upgraded X185, with a two-post tremolo bridge to replace the six-screw vintage tek-lok bridge. EVH had gotten everybody playing with their wang bars, and unhappy because surprise, the guitar would go out of tune.

The way to make deep bends stay in tune properly was to set up a full floating bridge, and that was much easier to do with a two-post bridge, which also allowed greater range. The Bendmaster was an excellent two-post bridge with a stamped plate and cast saddles. Low in profile, it could be equally easily adjusted flush against the guitar body as a good hardtail bridge.

The X175 was a replacement for the X140. By 1983 it was hard to sell a guitar without a tremolo bridge, and the X175 added that plus a strat-style 3-way knife switch instead of the Gibson-style 3-way of other models. Clearly this model was intended to be familiar to someone used to a Fender, and indeed it is the most strat-like of the line.

The X165 appeared in 1983 to replace the X130 with updated colors and a tremolo bridge. EVH was just appearing, and suddenly everyone wanted a guitar with a whammy bar, you couldn’t sell one without one, even though most people couldn’t do that much with it. The X165 was the first appearance of black hardware which became mostly standard throughout the line- very 80’s.

The X160 is one of the rarer Electra Phoenixes, appearing only in 1983 at the end of the appearance of the X150 with which it shared active EQ. For a guitar with premium electronics, its brown metalflake finish is strangely subdued, one can only imagine it was intended for perhaps a jazz audience.

Was active EQ really a useful feature? Gibson had asked the same question with the Artist series, which it doomed by associating with the strange and unpopular RD series. It can be useful for some players- certainly a preamp is one way of shaping distortion. But for distortion you want to boost midtones, not high and low. Active EQ tends to be most useful for players who use clean tones, especially those who, like electric acoustic players, tend to be plugging into weird PA systems not designed for guitar, or in weird room situations.

Today we have to remember that making effect devices easily available to consumers was a fairly new innovation. There were some hairy fuzz pedals, and wahs, and giants like Hendrix and Page had them, but there was not the plethora of devices we have today. So having active EQ onboard, like the MPC guitars which carried onboard effects, was a really interesting experimental way to apply the electronics. It was a different direction than we see today, one which certainly put controls at the users’ fingertips. The question remains whether the average player really wants that much control. For the specialist, however, it offers premium performance.

With so many Electra Phoenix models already available, it’s hard at first to see why the X155- a white two-pickup guitar- was so special, although the pearl white finish does have a gorgeous butter cream quality to it, which it shared with the X1PW which appeared at the same time. Like other special 82 models, the X135 and X145's, it carried a special plate on the headstock with an additional serial number whose significance is not known.

Above photos courtesy of Darren Costello.

The X155 was the first to carry many new features which would become standard for the entire Electra Phoenix line. Instead of a pickguard, it had pickups mounted flush with rings into a painted body. It used a four-knob arrangement (‘LP style’) to control the pickups, and had notched speed knobs instead of the brass knobs of previous models. And the body, instead of ash, was maple, whose hard resonance brings a bright singing tone.

In 1982 this was the time when New Wave and Punk were knocking at the door of mainstream awareness, driving out the last vestiges of seventies mellow. The X155 was a golden white harbringer of the styles that we recognize today as 80’s. From here on out, with only a few remaining exceptions, Electra Phoenixes had maple bodies in colors like white and red and black and green, with contrasting dark rosewood fingerboards, a clean look pioneered by the X155.